


75. helios

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [131]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 20:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8503801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “Helena,” Sarah says, “did you think you were gonna die in there?”
“No,” Helena says easily. She thinks: I had to get out for you and for my babies and for my family, and: there have been worse boxes, and: no, no, I was always going to make it out alive. She says none of those things. Just “no.” That’s enough.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: reference to self-harm]

When Helena pulls Sarah out of the tunnel and into the hot desert sunlight, Sarah closes her eyes and stands perfectly still for one moment, two moments, three. Helena makes a confused, questioning sound and Sarah’s eyes blink open.

“The sun’s so bright,” she says, sounding baffled by it. She blinks, runs a hand dazedly through her hair.

“Helena,” she says, “did you think you were gonna die in there?”

“No,” Helena says easily. She thinks: _I had to get out for you and for my babies and for my family_ , and: _there have been worse boxes_ , and: _no, no, I was always going to make it out alive_. She says none of those things. Just “no.” That’s enough.

Sarah lets out a disbelieving sigh-laugh and visibly collects herself. “Paul said there’s a Jeep this way,” she says, and as soon as the first syllable leaves her mouth she’s shattered again. Helena’s poor sister, unable to stay in one piece for very long at all.

“Okay,” Helena says. Neither of them move. Sarah is staring dazedly at one point in the dirt; her eyes are getting glassy, and she’s starting to shake, and Helena doesn’t know what to do with either of those things. It seems – unfair, somehow. It seems like something someone should have taught her.

“Sarah,” she says coaxingly, and Sarah jolts and blinks and is Sarah again.

“Yeah,” she says. “I – yeah. Okay. Alright.”

So they start walking. Helena would say _run_ , maybe, but she thinks if she said _run_ right now Sarah would burst into tears. Instead she closes her eyes, feels the sun on her eyelids. Sarah’s right: it’s bright, and warm. It doesn’t comfort Helena – but that’s the difference between the two of them, isn’t it. Helena feels the sunlight and thinks of running through the desert. Sarah feels the sunlight and is glad to be out of the dark where Helena left her behind.

“I’m sorry,” Helena says as they walk. Sarah blinks at her. Her eyebrows have sand in them. Helena wonders if it’s in her eyelashes too, but she doesn’t want to look too long. She can’t help thinking about the sun again.

“For leaving me,” Sarah says slowly.

“Yes.”

Sarah looks away from Helena and towards the vague shape of a garage in the distance. “I don’t understand why you did,” she says faintly, and Helena can hear the shimmer of tears in her voice like a distant mirage. Dream-water.

A million and one explanations tangle themselves around Helena’s tongue. She could say them. She knows that Sarah wouldn’t understand. “I’m sorry,” she says again. It’s the easiest truth she has on her tongue.

“Paul’s dead,” Sarah spits. “He died so I could get out, and you—” she clenches her fists in a sudden jolt of motion but there is nothing to punch in the desert except Helena or Sarah herself. Sarah looks down at her knuckles like she doesn’t recognize them. Maybe they’re Helena’s knuckles. Maybe they were this whole time.

“He gave up his life for you?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Shouldn’t have. What a bloody waste.” Helena can see the anger coiling up and down her spine and she realizes, suddenly, that she has sent them down the wrong road. There was a place back there where Helena should have said something different and that would have kept Sarah from being angry but here they are, and Sarah is angry, and Paul is dead.

“It wasn’t a waste,” Helena tries tentatively. “Your family needs you.”

Sarah makes a noise that is something like _tch_ and doesn’t answer, and – Helena is so tired of battering herself against the wall of Sarah’s self-loathing. She just stays quiet. The cut on her shoulderblade still hurts, so she rolls her shoulders a few times until she feels a little bit better.

“There’s the garage,” Sarah says suddenly with a bitter sort of relief. She charges ahead of Helena, tries the door, ends up rattling the handle. “Shit. Locked. I don’t even have a—”

But the metal is still in Helena’s pocket. She pulls it out, rubs her thumb along one edge of it to chase her dried blood away. “Here,” she says, and holds it out so Sarah can take it.

Sarah looks at the metal pick, then at Helena, then back down at what Helena’s offering her. For a moment it seems like she isn’t going to take it.

Then she says “Thanks,” and does.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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